Wikipedia talk:WikiProject Military history/Campaignboxes

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Contents 1 Warbox 2 Multiple campaign boxes 3 Capitalization in campaign box headers 4 Axis-Soviet War Campaignbox 5 Sub-set campaigns 6 Vietnam 7 Georgian Civil War 8 Russo-Turkish Wars

[edit] Warbox

You may want to clarify in the article, whether we are using the "Warbox" or "Campaignbox" for military articles. In addition, an explanation of the differences between each of them. It is rather confusing. Battlefield 10:39, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Multiple campaign boxes

Can one article include more than one campaignbox, or a single battle be listed on multiple campaigns? Ideally, obviously, that wouldn't happen. But there's a couple of situations where it might happen:

• Firstly, many of the current campaignboxes are actually wars, not campaigns. Some of those wars contain only one campaign; others don't. As we build out the articles on those wars we're bound to have an intermediary stage when some battles are listed under both the overall war and the specific campaign.
• Secondly, what a 'campaign' is partly depends on the perspective. Take the Battle of the Chesapeake in 1781. Is it part of Washington's Yorktown campaign (from the American and French perspective), part of the British southern campaign (from the British perspective), part of the campaign to control American waters or part of the wider naval campaign between Britain and France in the Western hemisphere (after all, the fleets of De Grasse and Hood had fought before in April 1781 off Martinique, sailed north to the Chesapeake a few days apart and would fight again in January 1782 off St. Kitts)? Arguably, it's any one or all four.

Obviously we don't want multiple campaignboxes on a single article, but perhaps we need to evolve some guidelines to establish what the appropriate campaign is and whether occasional exceptions are acceptable. JimmyTheOne 23:30, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

My view on this:

• DWikipedia talk:WikiProject Military historyouble listing as an intermediary stage is fine, of course, since the idea is to eventually remove it.
• More generally, the purpose of the campaignbox is not necessarily to represent a canonical "campaign" in the military sense; but to provide a convenient way for navigating related battles. Thus, a more "accurate" division is not always better. Not all campaigns need have their own campaignboxes—for many wars, in fact, a single campaignbox is sufficient. In the example you gave, for instance, I would prefer the latter options, as they allow more battles per campaignbox (campaignboxes with only one or two battles are not particularly useful).
• Occasional exceptions are acceptable, as they are to almost all rules. We don't want to encourage having multiple campaignboxes, though.

I agree, however, that we should have some better guidelines for how to divide larger wars into campaigns. It may be worthwhile to continue that discussion on the project page, where it's likely to get more input. Kirill Lokshin 23:45, 13 January 2006 (UTC)

Okay, I just looked over on the above linked Project page and didn't see any discussion of this over there. I'm starting to get into this aspect through the Korean War, where currently the campaignbox is more geared towards (some of) the battles of the Korean War, instead of the various campaigns themselves. I'm thinking that (maybe for larger wars, like Korea), it be broken out as like a "warbox" which would list the various campaigns of the war, with associated campaignboxes which would include the various battles of that campaign. So, the Korean War would be broken out with the initial campaignbox in the upper right titled "Korean War" and then list the various campaigns (five of them). Then, say the article on Battle of Heartbreak Ridge would also have an additional campaignbox for the "Outpost Battles (July 1951- July 1953)", which would then list the articles that fall into that campaign.

I think the biggest drawback at this time though may be that most of the major battles currently documented here, fall into the "Outpost Battles (July 1951- July 1953)" campaign, and the other four campaigns will probably only have one battle currently on here, though they should be expanded eventually. The "Chinese Intervention (3 November 1950-24 January 1951)" campaign should also include (besides just the Battle of Chosin Reservoir) Task Force Faith, and Task Force Drysdale may qualify as an article in it's own right with a little more research.

Ideas/opinions? Am I wrong (Which I very well could be, as new as I am). wbfergus 14:17, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

It may be doable, although I would suggest keeping things in a single campaignbox until there are enough articles (or clearly defined links to future articles) to make a set of split boxes worthwhile. This is a typical approach for larger wars (see, for example, the multitude of campaignboxes for WWI and WWII, and how multiple ones are applied to particular battles); the real question is whether there are enough battles that a single box is unwieldy. Kirill Lokshin 15:47, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

Okay Kirill, I'll take your advice and leave them as they are for now, though I'll add more battles to them. At what point is there to many battle listings for one campaignbox? Is there a number of battles, or does it depend more on how many lines the box takes up? I need to go through some of the Korean War articles and see that they all have the proper categories assigned and then see which 'battles' are missing from the campaignbox. wbfergus 17:07, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

There's no hard rule, I think; but, for comparison, something like {{Campaignbox Thirty Years' War}} is probably near the limit of what's doable with a single template. Kirill Lokshin 17:10, 26 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Capitalization in campaign box headers

Does the wacky Wikipedia capitalization standard apply to headers in campaign boxes? Editors seem to be divided, so we get things like, in the titles of Thirty Years' War campaign boxes: "Swedish intervention" (correct by Wikipedia standards) versus "Danish Intervention" (a capitalization standard for titles and headers used about everywhere except for Wikipedia). Like the Thirty Years' War boxes, other campaign boxes seem to be capitalized at random, so perhaps one standard ought to be applied. --Kevin Myers | (complaint dept.) 15:37, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Most campaignboxes use proper nouns as headers, so it shouldn't be a very widespread issue. As far as I can tell, though, normal capitalization rules don't seem to be consistent within templates anyways; I would try to move towards Wikipedia-style capitalization when necessary, but I don't think it's a big deal at this point. —Kirill Lokshin 15:54, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

Not that it's a big deal, but it's more widespread than you suggest. Most of the zillion American Civil War boxes seem to use non-Wikipedia style capitalization; all of the American Revolutionary War boxes did too, until I changed a couple. I think most Mexican-American War and Seven Years' War boxes use non-standard capitalization. Mind you, I don't really don't care and won't go changing any headers (except boxes I edit for other reasons). Just pointing out that there's no standard, even for boxes within a single war, and that it's something people might want to think about when editing the boxes. --Kevin

I'll admit that I had entirely forgotten just how many Civil War campaignboxes we had ;-)

In any case, we'll probably do another review of campaignboxes at some point (in a few months?), which would be a good time to take a look at this issue again. For the time being, casual cleanup by people editing the boxes for other reasons should be sufficient. —Kirill Lokshin 16:16, 14 March 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Axis-Soviet War Campaignbox

Template:Campaignbox_Axis-Soviet_War is currently subject of an edit conflict between me and Ghirlandajo. This is because of the unresolved issue of what size battles/operations should be added. I have made a proposal on the talk page of the campaign box, but this was never discussed to any conclusion. As a result it now appears to me that Ghirlandjo simply reverts any additions to the box, regardless of the size of the battle they refer to. This is not logical, since it leaves the box containing some smaller actions simply because they were added earlier. I would appreciate comments and suggestions. Andreas 15:17, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

I have to say I'm not surprised. This seems to be his typical behaviour. Albrecht 16:09, 10 April 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Sub-set campaigns

I have a quick question on a somewhat unconventional situation.

In World War II, there was a series of battles in North Africa referred to as the Western Desert Campaign. The American's joined relatively late and, in their naming scheme, called the actions of their forces the Egypt-Libya Campaign.

Now, it is my opinion that the ELC is contained entirely within the WDC. Do I add ELC to the WDC campaign box, and, if so, do I need to somehow differentiate it from other entires (which are operations and battles)? Oberiko 20:56, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

Well, based on your brief description (and I know next to nothing on this topic, so this idea may be utter nonsense), I would suggest two things:

1. Merge the two campaign articles, as this seems like a classic case of alternate names. I can't really see what the benefit of duplicating information about the (presumably same?) actual engagements across two articles is; the (new) single article would give an explanation of the different naming schemes and what each name is considered to encompass, but the overall narrative would be combined.
2. As a consequence, omit the alternate name from the campaignbox and just list the actual engagements.

I think that, in general, there doesn't need to be a separate article on every single named "campaign" of the war if it is more natural to combine several of them in a single article. Clearer narrative structure should, in my opinion, take precedence. Kirill Lokshin 21:03, 10 July 2006 (UTC)

I have run into a similar problem first with the Mongol Invasions and then with the Muslim expansion, which are part of a larger series of campaings not even necessarily in the same theater of war. I am attempting a method with the Template:Campaignbox Early Muslim Expansions and can use some input in sorting out the kinks which I then hope to move onto Seljuks, Khwarezmians, Ghaznevid and the Mongols. Maybe that is too ambitious but I can start or create a ton of stubs!--Tigeroo 10:45, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

Looks fine so far. :-) Kirill Lokshin 10:47, 2 August 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Vietnam

Is a Vietnam campaignbox necessary? --Brand спойт 10:08, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

One for the Vietnam War? It would certainly be a good idea; there's a large number of existing articles that would need to be put in chronological order to create it, though. Kirill Lokshin 11:33, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Georgian Civil War

Just wondering if anyone had any thoughts on moving the Georgian-Ossetian conflict and the Georgian-Abkhaz conflict out of the Template:Campaignbox Post-Soviet Conflicts in the Caucasus and into an infobox for the Georgian Civil War. It appears that these conflicts are more related to Georgia than to the other conflicts such as Chechnya, etc. Publicus 13:39, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

There's no reason we can't have both, of course; there are numerous other cases where a particular battle/war/etc. is listed on mutliple campaignboxes. Kirill Lokshin 15:12, 24 October 2006 (UTC)

[edit] Russo-Turkish Wars

Are all those Russo-Turkish Wars in the right place? Should they not come under the 18th and 19th centuries rather than 15th-17th century? Thanks Raymond Palmer 19:49, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

They're under the 17th century because that's when the "Russo-Turkish Wars" began; all of the series of wars listed here go by the overall start of the conflict. (I've added the overview campaignbox for the entire conflict, which might make things a bit clearer. It was actually supposed to be added a while ago, but we never got around to it, for some reason.) Kirill Lokshin 19:59, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

I see. What about adding Queen Anne's War as part of the War of the Spanish Succession. Also, the Dutch War (Franco-Dutch War) is not part of the Anglo-Dutch Wars. More accuratley, I think, to describe the Third Anglo-Dutch war as part of the Franco-Dutch War. I hope that makes sense? Raymond Palmer 20:09, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Well, if there are any actual campaignboxes that need to be moved, please feel free to move them; but some of these wars don't actually have templates. Kirill Lokshin 20:13, 19 January 2007 (UTC)

Yes, sorry, I just realised there is no campaignbox for QA war. Raymond Palmer 20:15, 19 January 2007 (UTC)